In my second and final year as President, the AFSA National Committee has worked and fought hard to especially support small-scale dairy and ethical meat producers who are at the pointy end of unfair regulations and outdated planning schemes. We’ve done so because the food sovereignty movement must actively support ethical and regenerative farming models so that eaters have somewhere to turn as we ask them to turn their backs on Big Ag and the duopoly.

A major focus for the year has been the crowdfunding campaign to establish a Legal Defence Fund to support farmers, makers, and eaters in their attempts to grow and access ethical and ecologically-sound produce in the face of unfair and inconsistent regulations and planning designed for large industrial agriculture and processing. We’ve currently raised nearly $30,000 and recently distributed the first funds to three farms in need: Elgaar Organic Dairy in Tasmania, Moo View Dairy in South Australia, and Happy Valley Free Range in Victoria. The campaign has been great for building AFSA’s membership, which has nearly tripled over the past year.

The #youcantbuywhatieat potlucks have been a huge success across the country at raising awareness of the problems of our current food safety regulations and the threat they pose to food sovereignty, and they have been some of the best meals I have personally ever eaten! We’ve feasted on wild-shot rabbit ragu, roadkill roo stew, home-killed and cured salamis, raw milk cheeses and an endless variety of pickles and ferments to support the millions of good bacteria in our guts and contest the orthodoxy of sterility that is a different but genuine risk to public health. Communities everywhere are coming together to talk about what kind of food and agriculture systems they want – it’s food sovereignty enacted!

The Legal Defence Fund is now a formal sub-committee of AFSA with its own Terms of Reference and we’ll be seeking expressions of interest soon for members of the Steering Committee – those with training or experience in food safety and planning are particularly urged to join us in our efforts to reform the system back to accommodating a more human scale.

In addition to running the campaign to build a Legal Defence Fund, we’ve also been very active in lobbying policymakers and legislators directly. AFSA made submissions to the Productivity Commission’s Inquiry into the Impact of Regulation on Agriculture, and the Animal Industries Advisory Committee’s inquiry in Victoria, and attended hearings of both inquiries to further express our views on what food sovereignty could look like with some careful reform. We’ve met with the Ministers for Agriculture and Planning in Victoria as well as backbenchers and leaders from the Opposition to build awareness of the food sovereignty movement across the political spectrum.

The small-scale farmer movement continues to grow and gather, and this year’s Deep Winter saw over 200 farmers and our allies come together for two rejuvenating days of strategizing and nourishing our community in Gerringong, NSW thanks to the wonderful people of Buena Vista Farm and Milkwood.

Also in AFSA’s efforts to support more small-scale producers I’ve met with dozens of livestock farmers across the country, and a movement to (re)build small regional abattoirs is well underway – watch this space in the coming year as we continue to reclaim the means of production back from the hands of corporate greed.

At the international level, in August 2016 Fair Food Farmers United (FFFU), the farmers' branch of AFSA, was officially accepted as a member of La Via Campesina (LVC), the leading voice of the global food sovereignty movement. LVC brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. It defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity. It strongly opposes corporate-driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.

In March 2016 I attended the Asia Pacific Regional Conference of the FAO in Malaysia, where we continued to forge alliances with civil society organisations working for food sovereignty across our region, and had the opportunity to put forward positions on over-regulation in Australia to the Director General of the FAO. I also learned more about opportunities to work in solidarity with our comrades across the Global South as they fight the ill effects of cheap Australian exports that are destroying their own smallholders’ capacity to survive.

I have done a dozen interviews for radio and print media as well as numerous podcasts in addition to nearly 20 public speaking engagements at events as varied as the Victorian Agritourism Summit, the Horsham Landcare AGM, and Slow Food’s Terra Madre in Italy. Our outgoing Communications Officer and Sydney University academic Alana Mann has detailed the rest of our media impact in her report.

I step down from the role of President knowing I am leaving it in the very able hands of organic beef and lamb producer Sally Ruljancich, a force of nature and know-how in her own right and a bright new leader for the food sovereignty movement in Australia.

I will continue on the AFSA National Committee in the role of Chair of Fair Food Farmers United, where I look forward to continuing our strong engagement with farmers, and to building on nearly two years of work to establish the Legal Defence Fund. I also look forward to furthering AFSA’s international advocacy work with IPC, LVC, and Urgenci over the coming year.

As I hand over the helm, I’d like to offer a sincere and resounding thank you to the hard-working National Committee members of 2015-16: Chris Balazs, Alana Mann, Sally Ruljancich, Jo Hall, Phil Stringer, Ben McMenamin, Paul West, Michele Lally, Sophie Lamond, Wendy Lehman, Sam Hawker, and Gavin Williams, as well as our two fantastic interns over this past year Katarina Munksgaard and Courtney Young. And a very special note of gratitude to our dynamo volunteers who help with AFSA’s websites and comms Kate Raymond, Sharon Lee, and Larna Pittolgio, as well as the talented Greer Freshwater Burton, who designed our brilliant new logo this year. If it’s true that the future belongs to those who turn up, I’m really glad it was you guys. ;-)

Well I have, and these have been just a few of the incredibly delicious, nutritious, body- and community-nourishing dishes that are being shared at the #youcantbuywhatieat potluck protests being hosted and enjoyed by fair-food minded folk across the country. The potlucks are part of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance’s (AFSA) fundraising campaign to establish a Legal Defence Fund (LDF) to support small-scale farmers in their efforts to grow ethically- and ecologically-sound food for their communities, and eaters’ right to access these foods in the face of overly burdensome, unfair and inconsistent regulation and planning law.

As we approach $25,000 raised we’d like to update you on the three farms we have profiled in the campaign.

The good news is that after two long years fighting for their right to continue their 20-year history of producing a stunning range of milk and traditional dairy products in the north of Tasmania, Elgaar are finally back in production. Two years is a very long time to live without a livelihood and their recovery will take time, and the more people who support them and buy their products the smoother that recovery will be.

Unfortunately, Moo View in South Australia are still not allowed to provide their herdshare members with raw milk following their criminal conviction, and nor are the many other producers who lost that highest-value avenue for their milk over the past year in most states. The Australian Raw Milk Movement and others in addition to AFSA are doing great work promoting the need for reform of the draconian laws that treat raw milk like heroin, but meanwhile we’re keen to get some of the funds already raised to help Moo View through this very difficult time.

Jo Stritch of Happy Valley Free Range has bought a new farm in Gippsland, a shire with permitted use of the farming zone for intensive agriculture, which is important because although free-range pig and poultry farmers don’t consider ourselves intensive, until the planning scheme is revised we are still defined that way. But to add insult to injury in Jo’s case, she recently learned that her new property has a cultural overlay on it that may preclude her from obtaining an intensive permit.

You read that right, Jo may still not be allowed to raise her beautiful pigs on the lush paddocks of Gippsland because the Victorian Government has yet to revise a planning scheme they all agree is flawed. When AFSA meets with the ministers they routinely tell us that they are sympathetic to the problem and ‘working on it’, but meanwhile Jo remains unable to farm. The report of the Animal Industries Advisory Committee went to the ministers for planning and agriculture on 29 April 2016 and they have yet to issue a response. We have repeatedly asked for a moratorium on all decisions around the definitions of intensive and extensive until the scheme is revised but to no avail.

Jo is still farming on leased land across the district and is very grateful for the many loyal customers who have supported her at farmers’ markets through this very difficult period, but again AFSA is keen to get her some funds to help while she battles this unfair situation.

I’m writing this as we drive up the Hume to our next #youcantbuywhatieat potluck protest being hosted by the wonderful Catherine and Steve Crawford of Tarrawalla Farm in northeastern Victoria, where another community of some 120 people are coming together to fight for their right to determine their own food and agriculture systems, and to do so over the time-honoured tradition of sharing their home-grown, hunted, home-killed, home-cured, fermented, pickled and homemade produce.

When we reach $25,000 raised for the Legal Defence Fund, we will distribute 25% as promised to these three heroic farms to give them the support and confidence they need to keep going.

Please share the campaign with all your networks – your social media, your newsletters, and over your own convivial meals in your community. And if you want to host a #youcantbuywhatieat potluck of your own, drop us a line at admin@afsa.org.au and we’ll send you everything you need to get going.

Cheap milk and corporate greed are killing dairy farmers, and in a commodity-driven food system there isn’t a damned thing farmers can do about it.

Regulation is stifling small-scale, ethical farming, and when the government shuts you down, there isn’t a damned thing farmers can do about it.

Loss of abattoirs across Australia is driving small-scale livestock farmers out of business, and there isn’t a damned thing farmers can do about it.

And yet there is something we can do about these problems, but farmers need everybody’s help. Farmers can’t mend the broken food system alone, but together we can all take back control of the means and ways of production!

Our campaigns

On dairy, there are some relatively simple things everyone can do right now:

Donate today so that farms like Elgaar, Mooview, and Happy Valley Free Range can get back to making a living doing what they do best – growing ethical and ecologically-sound, nutritious, and delicious food!

Our events

AFSA recently co-hosted events at the wonderful polyculture that is Caroola Farm, and in Canberra with Southern Harvest and the Australian Conservation Council. We also screened the excellent new documentary Polyfaces with the generous support of Regrarians and filmmakers Lisa Heenan, Isaebella Doherty, and Darren Doherty, followed by a delicious fair food dinner at A Baker. These events blended local strategising about the infrastructure needed to support the small-scale farming movement with the launch the exciting draft of the ACT Peoples’ Food Plan. Both occasions also served as successful fundraisers for the AFSA Legal Defence Fund.

Our lobbying

Following on from our submission to the Animal Industries Advisory Committee inquiry in February, AFSA is in discussions with the Victorian Ministers for Planning and Agriculture on the necessary changes to planning and regulation to keep up with innovation and best practice in the small-scale farming movement. We have been assured that our concerns have been heard, and a response from the ministers to the report is due in the next couple of months. We are also supportive of Minister Pulford’s work in Parliament to implement the recommendations from last year’s review of PrimeSafe (the Victorian meat industry regulator).

On abattoirs, AFSA has been meeting with farmers all over the country to learn more of their challenges, and what we hear repeatedly is:

huge multi-national corporations like JBS Swift are buying up Australian abattoirs and shutting small-scale producers out;

small, regional abattoirs are closing due to decreasing viability, often as a result of the need to upgrade facilities in order to meet changing regulations and the increasing cost of compliance;

the very limited number of poultry abattoirs in Australia are threatening to or have already shut small-scale farmers out as they don’t want to process small batches, and in some cases because they claim that the producers are competition as they raise the same breeds as the owners of the abattoirs.

The result of narrowing access to local abattoirs is that farmers are transporting animals longer distances for slaughter, a situation that has negative impacts on animal welfare and also the welfare of the farmers who in some cases might be doing more than an 8-hour round trip drive just to have their animals processed. This is not sustainable in terms of farmers’ time nor finances.

AFSA is talking with government and small-scale producers to find solutions to these barriers to ethical and ecologically-sound livestock farming. We simply must build more abattoirs (mobile or fixed) to protect the viability and integrity of the growing number of small-scale, ethical livestock farms in Australia.

Our voice

I recently had the pleasure to address the Tourism North East’s Agritourism Conference a few weeks ago, where I posited that the only reason we need agritourism is because we’ve made people tourists on the land, and failed to support farmers by paying appropriately for the cost of food.

We need to make agritourism a supplementary activity to agriculture that reconnects people to food production and helps make farming viable again – not by replacing agricultural income with tourism income, but by using the tourism to help people learn to pay what it costs to produce the food and let farmers get back to farming. Agritourism can be a wonderful form of community engagement and connecting people to food production, and there is an urgent need to re-skill the population around farming and the domestic skills of cooking, preserving, and reducing waste.

AFSA has grave concerns about the control held by large pharmaceutical companies and their quick fixes to keep animals in unhealthy environments alive, which hides the need for serious reform of those production methods. By working more closely with intensive animal industries, AFSA hopes to start making small inroads to help shift the industry towards more ethical, ecologically- and socially-just forms of production.

Here’s hoping for a brighter future for all farm animals, farm and food workers, farmers and eaters everywhere.

It’s been a huge start to 2016 with a lot going on in the food sovereignty movement, keeping all us farmers and eaters very busy indeed!

A common thread in our activities is governance – good governance, bad governance, and the perverse outcomes of ignorant governance. Let me explain with a few examples…

Definition of ‘intensive agriculture’ in planning schemes

In Victoria, a farm is deemed ‘intensive’ if it imports more than 50% of the nutritional requirements for its animals. So technically all pig and poultry farms, most dairies, and many farms suffering from this awful drought should have permits to run ‘intensive’ production models. (Interestingly, horses are exempt as they aren’t considered farm animals, but I digress.)

The scheme was obviously designed to capture feedlots and actual intensive pig and poultry sheds, and even perhaps so-called industrial ‘free-range’ farms where stocking densities may be as high as 10,000 birds per hectare. Great, that seems like a pretty good thing.

But wait, the scheme says that my farm, with around 110 pigs on 23 acres at any given time is also ‘intensive’ because we collect spent brewers’ grain from the local brewery and supplement it with a GMO-free grain pellet and seconds from agriculture in our region. And it says that Jo Stritch’s Happy Valley Free Range farm in the Yarra Ranges, with similar stocking densities and excellent use of green ‘waste’ from her region is intensive too. In Jo’s case, intensive agriculture is banned as she is in a Green Wedge Zone.

And so Jo is selling her farm and moving her family and all her animals to a shire that will let her raise her pigs on the open paddocks.

Jo was Livestock Farmer of the Year in 2015.

AFSA put in a submission to the Animal Industries Advisory Committee’s Discussion Paper, and attended a hearing in Bendigo to further canvass our concerns about the deeply problematic definition of ‘intensive’, and were delighted that our evidence and arguments were well received by the Committee. We’re now awaiting the Committee’s recommendations, which we hope include a more appropriate means of assessing whether a farm is in fact ‘intensive’, as well as support for communities who are fighting everywhere to stop inappropriate development of actual intensive pig and poultry sheds with all of their attendant environmental, animal welfare, and social costs.

Impact of Regulation on Small Farms

AFSA also put in a submission to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the impact of regulatory burden in Australian agriculture.

In our submission, we gave evidence of many examples of overly burdensome regulation stifling innovation and the very viability of small-scale farms. One such example is the terrible impact of lack of due process for Elgaar Dairy in Tasmania, who were shut down after 20 years of traditional production of organic milk when the food safety authority decided they needed a new pasteurizer and various upgrades to what they determine are more ‘modern’ standards. Elgaar has no history of food safety issues, and have now been without a license for over a year and a half, during which they crowdfunded over $250,000 to buy a new pasteurizer and meet the new requirements. The Tasmanian authority has yet to grant them another license in spite of the upgrades and enormous amount of work done in good faith. AFSA condemns such draconian measures and unwillingness by government to support small businesses towards compliance.

Our submission also cites egregious examples from Victoria’s meat regulator PrimeSafe, the huge impact of knee-jerk changes to regulation of raw milk on small-scale dairy farms (many of whom have now gone out of business), and the complicated business of ensuring appropriate labeling of GMO and imported ingredients while not creating an extra burden for small-scale producers who sell directly to the public.

In the second week of March I had the honour of attending the 33rd APRC of the FAO in Puttrajaya, Malaysia, along with 54 other members of civil society organization (CSOs) from across the region. We started with two days of sharing issues – everything from loss of mangroves and destruction of ecosystems and viability of small-scale fishing in Indonesia and Malaysia due to large-scale aquaculture and trawling, to loss of access to the necessary infrastructure to process livestock and mill rice in Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Viet Nam, and Australia.

The FAO has major themes currently running on the importance of agroecology to a sustainable future for soils and the people who grow our food, and another on the importance of control of value chains by small-scale farmers to maintain or increase viability. There is also strong work being done to acknowledge the importance of situating work on nutrition within the broader scope of food systems. While the Asia Pacific region has halved hunger in the past 20 years, there are still 490 million hungry here, the highest proportion in the world, while there is conversely a significant rise of overweight and obesity as countries industrialise.

The Australian government’s contributions to this forum were, quite frankly, embarrassing and totally at odds with the good work being done by the FAO. The Australian delegate from the Department of Agriculture Matt Worrell told those assembled that we should ‘focus on large holdings that are better capitalised and better educated’, ‘aggregate smaller farms to achieve efficiencies’, and that ‘smallholders’ positions can be improved by free trade – by connecting them to international markets’, concluding that free trade can solve food security issues in the region. Ours was the only country in the region that I heard to be openly dismissive of smallholders – every other speaker stressed the importance of small-scale production for food security and rural prosperity.

I will write a longer report on the APRC and share it on the AFSA website soon.

Loss of abattoirs in Australia

We are facing a crisis as one after another small, regional abattoir shuts its doors in the face of increased compliance costs and inability to compete with large-scale multinational abattoirs who are buying up our infrastructure and increasingly shutting out small-scale producers as we’re perceived to be a nuisance in their large, industrial, export-focused models.

AFSA is working to gather information about the increasingly centralized control of abattoirs, and we are heartened by the work being done up in the Mary Valley in Queensland by a group of small-scale livestock farmers to investigate their options for re-establishing an abattoir after the loss of their closest in Eumundi last year. See Phil Stringer’s excellent report for more detail elsewhere in this newsletter.

In my own region in the central highlands of Victoria, a group of us are also working together to investigate the option of an on-farm mobile slaughter unit, and in Bega, NSW, smallholders already took control of their abattoir when it threatened to close in 2013, and formed a cooperative to keep it open.

Community Supported Agriculture on the rise!

There is plenty of good news amongst all of these tales of bad governance negatively impacting on food sovereignty across Australia and indeed the world… and it lays with you, the people, who are continuing to find ways to support farmers directly, whether by frequenting farmers’ markets, buying online directly from farmers, or joining the increasing number of farms who run CSAs.

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is one of the pillars of food sovereignty – a solidarity economy that ensures the viability and accountability of farmers, while providing delicious, nutritious food produced in ecologically-sound and ethical ways. Have a chat with some of your farmers about whether it might work for them, and what you can do to help. Also have a look at Transition Farm’s excellent model, and read more about CSA and other great food sovereignty initiatives in the latest special Fair Food issue of Pip Magazine!

Those who control the means of production control the world. Ask yourself who you want that to be – faceless multinationals who frankly don’t care whether your family gets sick from the rubbish they sell you, or the farmer whose kids might go to school with yours? Wendell Berry famously said that ‘eating is an agricultural act’, and Michael Pollan extended the claim to point out that it is also a political act. Let’s show the politicians what we want with every bite we take – it’s up to all of us to build a fair food future!

It’s been an exhilarating and challenging year as President of AFSA as I’ve worked with an amazing team of committed fair food activists to further the interests of food sovereignty in Australia.

Part of the focus for the five-year-old Alliance this year has been to improve our internal operations with clearer processes for decision making and communications, and better financial management. I am delighted to be finishing the year with a surplus and a healthy bank account, largely thanks to the fundraising made possible by the Fair Food documentary screenings, DVD sales, and generous support from the City of Melbourne. As at the end of the 2014-15 financial year, the doco had profited AFSA $6,679.

Both the Fair Food doco and anthology edited by AFSA Secretary Nick Rose have greatly helped spread the word of the good work happening across the country as producers, chefs, connectors, knowledge workers, local governments, and activists build a new, fairer food system for all.

We have hopes of crowdfunding a second documentary focusing on the plight of farm and food workers in Australia, and how these systems of exploitation prop up the duopoly and concentration of power here and globally. Watch this space. ;-)

The year has seen AFSA leading the fight for fair and consistent regulation of the food system, with participation at the Regrarians-led #EatBuyGrow rally a highlight. Speaking alongside lunatic farmer Joel Salatin on the many ways in which ‘folks, this ain’t normal’ and the need to contest the orthodoxy of industrial food was both an honour and a great opportunity to amplify the message locally.

We’ve worked to spread the word of the plight of dairy farmers in Victoria affected by the Government’s hasty decision to make it more difficult to sell raw milk, as well as the difficulties faced by livestock producers in processing and distributing their produce, especially in Victoria, where we’ve helped trigger a review of the meat regulator PrimeSafe (yet to report). I visited the Executive Director of the America Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund in Kentucky to learn how we might build such a fund here, and work is well advanced towards the establishment of a legal defence branch of AFSA.

I’ve already recounted the #epicfairfoodtour I made of the US in June, where AFSA’s food sovereignty relationships and networks were further developed with some of the most popular voices in the movement, including Joel Salatin, Temple Grandin, Dan Barber, and Michael Pollan.

Back home, I was delighted to host the inaugural Deep Winter Agrarian Gathering (conceived by fabulous farmer Fraser of Old Mill Bio Farm in NSW) in August with the able assistance of local Sarah Chignell. Two days of discussing the issues and opportunities in production, connection, regulation, and regeneration of the food system were heralded by fair food pioneer Costa Georgiadis as ‘the Woodstock of Australian agriculture’.

We recounted and plotted, feasted and posited, and frankly talked fair food ‘til the cows came home.

The high proportion of young farmers and future farmers attending was especially encouraging – just goes to show how much more appealing fair food farming is than industrial agriculture! I’m already looking forward to the next one (perhaps somewhere a tad warmer…)

In the first week of September I had the honour and privilege to attend the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) meeting in Gujarat, along with my comrade Nick Rose. You can read our separate report on the outcomes of the meeting here. In short, the meeting clarified the need for AFSA to stand up to our own government in solidarity with our comrades in the Global South, to protect them as well as our own producers from the ravages of free-trade agreements that benefit nobody except large, transnational agribusiness.

The impact of cheap imports is devastating for farmers everywhere – from fruit growers in Victoria to small-scale beef producers in Kenya.

Our involvement with the IPC has also connected us to the ongoing dialogue with the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN, where we can add our voice to the global movement for agroecology and the fight against industrial livestock production, amongst the many other issues.

In spite of the continued centralized control of our food system, especially by the duopoly Coles & Woolworths, and in spite of the burdens and unfairnesses of regulation for small-scale, transparent food production, and even in spite of the ongoing exploitation of the labour of farm and food workers across Australia, I feel hopeful.

I feel hopeful because more people are choosing to buy directly from farmers and leave the duopoly out of their shopping bag. I feel hopeful because we’ve got the regulators’ attention, and reform seems possible. I feel hopeful because of the work of Four Corners to expose the treatment of farm workers and the tireless work of the NUW to support workers everywhere.

I feel hopeful because I’m a tragic optimist who takes every tiny grain of hope and plants it deeply in the rich soil of this fecund movement.

I am especially grateful for the work and support of Secretary Nick Rose, Communications Officer Alana Mann, Memberships Officer Michele Lally and our wonderful intern Katarina Munksgaard, who have contributed tirelessly all year. Thank you also to Vice President Jeff Pow, Treasurer Nadine Ponomarenko, and Louise Abson for your contributions, and finally thank you to the members who resigned earlier in the year due to challenging circumstances, Clare Richards and Michael Croft. And of course thank you to long-term volunteers and co-founders of AFSA Russ Grayson and Fiona Campbell for your many years of work to build and support the movement through the website and AFSA communications with members.

So long as we all continue working together, we’ve got this. Here’s to another great year for the fair food movement!